Thinking has a deep relation to hope. All thinking is hopeful thinking. Even conservative thinking is hoping that change will not happen and works to prevent it. Philosophizing is a way of hoping. Usually hope enables us to imagine a different life from a present circumstances. The catch is in the circumstances. It is in the manner we view our circumstances that hope becomes an illumining vision. This is why whatever may me our orientations, we can still find latencies and tendencies within the horizons of the circumstances that can enable us to imagine a different future. This is why all thinking can be characterized as a hopeful thinking. But we have to take care. Hannah Arendt teaches us that hopeful thinking can be contaminated by messianism which promises to offer redemption from ills of the present in the future.
When messianism take control over us hope becomes dark. This is a condition when hope is bent to serve vested interest. Walter Benjamin cautions us to guard ourselves against the messianic arrest of our thought. In such a condition, we give up thinking. We give up philosophizing. We think that the messiah will come and put things in place. Our life then becomes a hauntology. We are hopefully waiting for the messiah to come. Such a condition is indeed a messianic arrest of our hope. Under such a condition, we have the challenge to hope against hope. It is an imperative to philosophize. When we stop philosophizing, we stop thinking hopefully.
Hope is a promised land. It also offers a happy ending. It enables us to go through what we may call catharsis in search of the promise of hope. We usually link hope with utopia. The dialectics of hope is always thought to be positive and progressive. But this is not always true. Hope can deceive us. Hope can run on a negative dialectics. It can become a trap and deception. This is why Zizek invites us to embrace the courage of hopelessness. He tells us hope often looks like a light at the end of the tunnel. But light at the end of the tunnel can be the headlight of a new engine that is coming to crush us. That is why we cannot blindly embrace any messiah who is offering us hope and give up thinking. Arendt says that hope under such conditions can become a dangerous barrier for acting courageously in dark times. Hence, we have to challenge to embrace the courage of hopelessness. We cannot allow hope to overleap our thinking and our reality. Hope within the bounds of critical thinking and not removed from our reality is sure hope.
The courage of hopelessness is a thinking that is critically alert to the ways hope can be employed deceptively by vested interest. Hopeful critical philosophizing is a courage of hopelessness. It is authentic hopeful thinking. Such a thinking generates a sure hope. But thinking that we call hopeful thinking being a courage of hopelessness is not a rationally measured response. It is one that emerges on the edges of desperation. Therefore, it is not Hegelian Aufhebung. It is the courage of hopelessness that enables us to refuse to escape into what may be called the fools paradise. Unfortunately, when we stop thinking at hopeless times , the world stepped into totalitarianism. Hence, we have to remember that sometimes hope takes us away from the reality of the world and bewitched by the promise of a happy tomorrow , we enter the road of self-destruction.
Deviated hope can thus, prevent us from acting in dark times. Hope that springs from the courage of hopelessness flows from no longer ( past) and not yet ( future). It is taking us into the present. This thinking rooted in the courage of hopelessness is deeply embedded in love. Such a thinking produces our ability to save humanity and the world. This hope does not passively wait for a future outcome. It embraces the challenges of the living present and takes us the task of saving the day. Thus, hope is not article of belief that makes us wait for the opportune time to unfold. It is an article of action that learns to respond to the imperative of the here and now. This means hopeful thinking is not simply a waiting for the promise of the future. It is action that initiates the coming of the promised change.
It is this hope-filled action that has the power to save us in dark times. Hopeful thinking that generates hope-filled action does not hope that the dark times will disappear. It is the courage of desperation that puts up action to do one’s bit to push the darkness away by lighting a wick. Arendt calls names this action natality as it initiates new beginnings and its destination is not closed. What we have called hope-filled action emerging from hopeful thinking or philosophizing can also dynamically generate new beginnings and its destiny is not fully determined. It is through a constant and continuous hopeful thinking that new hope-filled actions will emerge that can take us to unimagined emancipative destinations. Hope is elusive and profoundly political. It requires thinking that we call hopeful thinking that has the courage of hopelessness. To engage in such hope-filled action, we have the challenge to belong to the unchosen people. This means we have to embrace the courage of hopelessness even when the chosen people chose to live with hope that will only chain them.
